The leader of Angela Merkel’s party has moved into pole position in the race for the chancellorship following an overwhelming vote of confidence from conservative grandees.
Armin Laschet is now emerging as the frontrunner to become Germany’s next leader despite his feeble approval ratings and a challenge from his arch-rival on the centre right, Markus Söder.
The nomination has yet to be confirmed but the strong show of support for Laschet from the upper echelons of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), including Merkel, will entrench his advantage.
In September Germans will elect their first new chancellor in 16 years. The CDU’s decision to swing behind Laschet, 60, an amiable but widely unloved moderate who governs North Rhine-Westphalia, the country’s most populous state, is a gamble.
A poll published this morning by RTL, a private broadcaster, found that only 3 per cent of voters would like to see him as chancellor, while 36 per cent favoured Söder, the chief minister of Bavaria.
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Laschet came last in a list of six prominent politicians, including the two leaders of the Green party and the top candidate from the left-leaning Social Democratic party (SPD).
Yet the CDU top brass has calculated that his popularity will recover if Germany’s vaccination programme gathers steam and the third wave of the pandemic subsides over the course of the summer.
At a summit in Berlin this morning the party’s powerful 22-member Präsidium, or national executive, expressed resounding support for Laschet’s candidacy. He also received the backing of the CDU’s broader national leadership committee.
Volker Bouffier, 69, chief minister of Hesse and deputy leader of the Präsidium, said the final decision between Laschet and Söder would be made over the coming week. “We have all declared our unambiguous support for the party leader [Laschet] and made it clear that we think he is exceptionally well suited to the role,” Bouffier said.
After the choreographed statements of support from his party’s power-brokers Laschet made a speech that resembled an opening foray into the election campaign, trumpeting his pro-industry and pro-European convictions.
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He argued that the pandemic had exposed the weaknesses of Germany’s creaking system of federal government and its bureaucratic reliance on paperwork in the digital era.
“I want a modern Germany,” Laschet said. “I want us to link the issue of climate change with the issue of the economy. I will also fight for us to remain an industrial country and to preserve industrial jobs.”
Laschet also shrugged off worries about his approval ratings, comparing his candidacy to other once unpopular decisions by CDU leaders, such as joining the western alliance during the Cold War and giving up the deutschmark in the 1990s.
“Of course we keep an eye on the opinion polls,” Laschet said. “But there are countless examples of the polls shifting within a very short period of time. On matters of substance the CDU has always been shaped by its reluctance to be led by the polls . . . You have to do politics on the basis of fundamental convictions that pay no heed to opinion polls.”
However, his battle with Söder is not quite over. Söder’s party, the Bavarian Christian Social Union (CSU) stood firmly behind his candidacy this afternoon, exposing the rift in its alliance with the CDU, known as the Union.
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Söder said the Union was facing its toughest election campaign since its defeat in 1998 and needed a strong leader. “Polls aren’t everything,” he said. “But they are a clear indication of what the public thinks and we can’t simply decouple ourselves from the majority of the people in our country.”
Laschet’s unpopularity and zig-zagging pandemic policy have left parts of the CDU with doubts about his leadership abilities.
He oversaw two stinging state election defeats last month and the Green party has lured away many of the CDU’s voters, including in Laschet’s home state.
Today the regional branch of the CDU in Berlin pledged allegiance to Söder, following a number of the party’s backbenchers in the Bundestag.
Kai Wegner, 48, an MP and leader of the Berlin CDU, hailed Söder as a “hands-on, successful crisis manager who can lead Germany out of the pandemic and safeguard our country for the future”.
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Söder also won the endorsement of a CDU district association in Düsseldorf, Laschet’s backyard. Christian Lütz, the party’s branch chairman in Lierenfeld, an industrial suburb of the North Rhine-Westphalian capital, said its board had voted unanimously for the Bavarian leader.
“We want a candidate who enjoys good public approval ratings through their resolute action and will give the Union a strong starting position in the general election,” the association said.
Yet the CDU elite is profoundly suspicious of Söder, 54, and the CSU after it almost broke up Merkel’s coalition government in 2018 with a row over migration policy. Some senior CDU figures view Söder as an unscrupulous loose cannon.
Paul Ziemiak, 35, the CDU’s general secretary, appeared to hint at these reservations after the party leadership summit. “This is a question of the ability to lead but also of the ability to lead in partnership and to run a team,” he said.
“It is a question about the whole breadth of the Union, about the modernisation of our country, about the capacity to integrate not just the two parties but all of society. In our unanimous view Armin Laschet is the best embodiment of all these qualities.”
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Crown prince rises again
Six years ago a group of 35 students at Aachen University received grades from their European politics exams (Oliver Moody writes). This caused much puzzlement because only 28 had actually sat the test.
It turned out that their lecturer, an MP called Armin Laschet, had lost the papers and handed out whatever marks came to mind. “The procedure wasn’t optimal,” he said.
The scandal might have finished a lesser politician. Yet Laschet is well versed in treating triumph and disaster just the same. Angela Merkel’s new crown prince has spent more than 30 years inching his way up the treacherous ladder of German politics, often slipping half a dozen rungs only to haul himself up again.
Laschet, 60, was born to Roman Catholic, middle-class parents in Aachen, near the Belgian border. He has made a virtue of his background: the family home address is still in the phone book.
He joined the Christian Democratic Union at 18 and was elected to the Bundestag aged 33, in 1994, only to be voted out four years later. He won the party leadership of North Rhine-Westphalia in 2017, at the second time of asking, but his term has been overshadowed by the pandemic. His antipathy to lockdowns has often put him on the wrong side of public opinion.
Despite his unpopularity CDU officials narrowly elected Laschet as their new national leader in January. Party insiders praise his tenacity and collegiate manner but many baffled observers are inclined to think, as a wise man once said, that this procedure isn’t optimal.
